How Society Measures Success

By Yiler Huang

In the modern society, there are a lot of people who would be considered successful. Among different fields, the general public uses different standards to measure how successful someone is. In order to find out what makes a successful student, we conducted an online survey asking the general public what are the factors that can make a student successful. We believe that the result of this research can be helpful for us to understand the views and values of the society better, and get an educated assumption of how the general public thinks.

The online survey took the form of a Google Form, including three questions: the gender of the respondent, the age of the respondent, and the question “你覺得一個成功的學生要具備哪三個條件? What three factors do you think a student needs to have to become successful?”. All the questions were in both Chinese and English because the survey took place in Taiwan, which is a Chinese speaking country. The form was sent to various through social medias namely Instagram, Line, Discord etc. The responses were categorized into 8 different categories: social relationship, physical appearance, personal qualities, action, wealth, abilities, personal background, and enjoyment.

By the date of 2023, October 11, 98 responses were collected from 33 respondents. In total, there were 17 female respondents and 16 male respondents. 25 out of all the respondents were students, and 8 respondents were at working age. 6 responses were in the social relationships category, 2 were in physical appearance, 8 were in actions, 1 was in personal background, 3 were in enjoyment, 51 were in personal qualities, 2 were in wealth, 24 were in abilities, and the last one was uncategorized. More details are shown in the table below.

From the data we have collected, some interesting results were discovered. From the responses, we can see that over half of the answers were in the personal qualities category. Which overlaps with the result of another research about measuring the value of a student (Huang, 2023) that was done in late September, 2023. Similar to the researcher's last research (Huang, 2023), personal qualities were followed by abilities when it comes to deciding if a person is successful or not. From this result, we can see that the way people measure a person's value and deciding if a person is successful overlaps to a certain degrees. However, it seemed like the answers were even more concentrated in personal qualities and abilities when people are deciding if a person is successful or not.

Just as Huang's research (Huang, 2023), we have also observed differences between the responses from female subjects and male subjects regarding to responses that were categorized in the social relationships category. From the 6 responses that were categorized in social relationships, 5 were contributed by female subjects and only 1 was by a male subject. Which seems to align with the social consensus that suggests that women care more about social relationships than man.

Overall, we can conclude that a majority of people in the modern Taiwanese society believes that personal qualities and abilities are the two most important factors that lead to a person's success. Also, there is a difference between answers from female and male subjects in the social relationships category. This result can be a general description of the factors people think makes a person successful. However, it is significant to recognize that the result might not be a accurate reflection of the reality due to the limited sample size and the limitations of an online survey. If we want to eliminate these potential problems, further researches will have to be done.

Huang, Y. (2023, September 25). Measure of the “Worth” of a Student. Retrieved from https://renickbell.net/middleschool/doku.php?id=students:yiler-student-value